The Texas Biennial is an independent survey of contemporary art in Texas. The fifth edition of the exhibition will take place in the fall of 2013, making the Texas Biennial the longest-running state biennial in the U.S. In celebration of the fifth anniversary of the project, the Texas Biennial presents two special exhibitions on view simultaneously at Lawndale Art Center in Houston and Big Medium in Austin, August 23 ‒ September 28, 2013. Co-curated by former Biennial curators Michael Duncan (TX★09) and Virginia Rutledge (TX★11), the Texas Biennial Invitational at Lawndale will showcase current work by four previous Biennial artists, two of whom – McNeil and Tucker – have also been selected for the 2013 Texas Biennial group survey exhibition opening September 5 at San Antonio’s Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum. Christie Blizard (Lubbock, San Antonio / TX★09, TX★11) will show video and performance based work; Marcelyn McNeil (Houston / TX★11) will contribute paintings from her ongoing exploration of abstraction; Tom Orr (Dallas / TX★07, TX★11)will be represented by both sculptural and two dimensional work; and Brad Tucker (Austin / TX★07, TX★11) will install sculptures from two of his most recent series. Click here to download the gallery guide, including interviews with the artists.

In conjunction with the Texas Biennial Invitational at Lawndale Art Center, Christie Blizard will perform two walks through Houston on Saturday, September 7, 2013 and Sunday, September 15, 2013 starting at 9:30 AM. Click here for details.

This exhibition is made possible in part through the Sarah Vaughan Foundation and the City's Initiative Grant Program of the Houston Arts Alliance.

Fantastic Habitat • Susi BristerCecily E. Horton Gallery

Fantastic Habitat is a body of photographic work depicting anonymous figures covered in densely textured or patterned textiles inserted into various landscapes as mysterious organic forms. Lush faux fur and vivid fabrics conceal the still figures, producing a bizarre visual and contextual relationship between the shrouded form and its environment and creating a landscape-within-landscape effect. Recent images from this series depict figures covered in bold, kitschy textiles situated within unearthly landscapes of the American Southwest, enhancing the strangeness of the figure/environment relationship and introducing further slippage between real and imaginary. Throughout this work Brister questions the nature of sculpture, performance and portraiture, playing with notions of natural vs. artificial, and challenging traditional photographic renderings of the figure in the landscape. At once both humorous and melancholy, these images resonate with a psychological tension, evoking notions of the sublime and the vulnerability of the human body.

Cary Reeder’s paintings focus on vanishing historic 1920s bungalows, using these physical structures to explore the themes of loss and secrecy. Reeder’s own home and neighborhood have been the inspiration for this series. Rather than portraying charm and nostalgia, Reeder brings the soul of these houses onto the canvas with an aim to reveal more than simply a structure but to peak the viewer’s curiosity into the stories that lie within. For this exhibition, Reeder focuses specifically on houses that are endangered for demolition in an attempt to document a disappearing history and to recreate the lost sense of place that occurs with each cleared lot. The resulting exhibition brings focus to home, history and memory disappearing in the wake of progress, and to the mysteries and unknown stories of the people next door.

Susannah Mira creates objects and environments from industrial sidestream, inspired by the demise of American manufacturing. The decline of this sector, the financial crisis, and gender and wage distribution in the labor market are all inspirations for this body of work. In creating orderly, geometric constructions, she applies a personal logic to the by-products of large enterprise. She also frequently employs the traditionally feminine arts with these industrial remainders, such as sewing, weaving, or detailed handwork, in a willful dislocation of art, design, and craft. Mira's installation in the Project Space employs thousands of laser cut plywood pieces, offcuts from a small business manufacturing build-your-own rocket kits for children.

For this site-specific installation, Lina Dib will generate soundscapes in three transitional areas at Lawndale Art Center: the elevator, stairwells and 3rd floor window. These spaces are thresholds that mark the difference between up and down, and inside and outside. Drawing attention to the architecture of Lawndale, Dib will fill these generally unnoticed spaces with sounds that range from the microscopic to the monumental. Sound takes time. It can only exist in time. And unlike sight, sound is immersive. Sound physically hits and penetrates. It bundles us with it. It requires and even creates our presence, such that we are not in front of something, but within it. By situating the viewer within the piece, this intervention will make space itself more pliable -- creating a kind of soft architecture using sonic fields that change and at times respond to the viewer, while playing with motion and scale.

Skywriting is a collaboration between artists Daniel Anguilu and
Aaron Parazette. This project is the third phase of the rotating
mural at Lawndale Art Center. Both painters employ forms of
abstract patterns in their work, though their individual approach
differs greatly. Anguilu’s intuitive approach to painting outdoor
spaces results in gestural forms that take shape on the wall, while
the clean lines and mathematical forms of Parazette’s work result
from a more calculated approach to painting.